Rehabilitation
by nathan-p
Summary: So what, exactly, happens when an empath loses her mind? OC, some wangst, mildly pretentious. First chapter written for Rowena DeVandal's August 2008 challenge.
1. Chapter 1

"I can't believe you thought that was a good idea."

She grins at me. "You know me." I don't. "Seemed like a good idea at the time." It might have.

I lean against the wall, looking at her. Young. Pale, smeared with soot and ashes; I wonder if she's mourning her own sanity. Because it's clear; nothing remains behind her blue eyes, nothing but dust and inner serenity.

Fire licks at the buildings behind us; I can _hear_ it, that's how close it is to us. It sounds hungry.

"Come on," she says. "Let's go."

Her hair is cut short, light blonde, almost white, with smears of dark ash in it in it; her eyes almost glow in the half-light.

She hasn't told me her name, but expects me to know her; we don't know each other, but she calls me Max as if she knows me. If I hadn't stopped for just a moment to get a newspaper, I wouldn't be here. Someone else would be in my place.

"Who are you?" I ask, following her out of the alleyway, into the street. I don't know why I'm still following her, except that there's a burning building behind me, and any direction is better than backwards.

She wipes her forehead with the back of her hand, smearing the grime around, and walks grimly on. Pretending not to hear.

"Who are you?" I repeat.

"I thought you knew my name," she says.

"No, I don't." I tell her the truth.

She turns and looks at me, almost casual. "Anna," she says. "Anna Sinclair." She pauses. "You killed my father."

I take off running, because there's _something_ in her eyes, something that doesn't belong, something that's, plain and simple, unearthly. And familiar.

She catches up to me, hardly expending any effort coming after me. She doesn't mention her father. "Come on," she says, almost teasing. "I've got a job to do."

"So have I," I say.

She glares at me. "Yeah. You do. You kill people."

"Listen," I say, edging away from her, stepping towards the middle of the street. "I don't do anything like that."

"You're a nutcase," she says, calm. "You kill people and then you say you don't."

"How do you know you're any different?" I ask.

The world shakes apart, because we aren't different at all, in fact we're the same person, and I hear her say what could almost be a prayer:

"If it makes you feel better to believe that, go right ahead."


	2. Chapter 2

It's grey outside -- feels like inside my head, all close, wet, and noisy. Like a headache, the one that feels like nails in my temples.

Rain patters down everywhere, feather-light little drops, collecting in my hair, on my skin and clothes. It'll rain harder tonight.

It's too hard to focus -- my eyes are burning, white sclera shot through with red, and my head aches, like someone whisked my brains into fluff with a fork. They're about the consistency of tofu, brains. Scrambled tofu brains -- delicious.

She put me on the meds -- to get rid of the headaches, clear the fuzz inside my head. But the only thing they did was fill my head with fluffy cotton, deaden sensation, dampen everything to murmurs. I quit taking them. She doesn't know.

I can't remember why I came out here -- was I going home? Sounds right, but this is the wrong part of the city.

I step inside -- it's dark, dirty, with the fluorescent lights flickering overhead. The sign is too blurry, the letters unreadable, but I can smell the gathered people, and I can hear a train rushing down the tracks: _subway_.

We don't have a subway, do we?

And then my head implodes, suddenly, quietly.


	3. Chapter 3

When I wake up, the headache isn't as bad, and it smells like hospital. But instead of scrambled, my brains feel like they've been stuffed with cotton -- it's a familiar feeling, and I know they must have put me back on the medication. They. Who is they?

My face hurts, and my hands are bruised, purple blooming like sick flowers in white earth. There's blood caked under my fingernails. What have I been doing?

I remember the subway, but nothing after that until now.

A man comes into the room, holding a clipboard. I don't trust him. "I'd like to ask you some questions, Miss Sinclair."

I nod.

He asks me my name, the current year, the name of the president. I answer correctly, a perfect score. Then he asks me how I came to be here; I tell him that I was in the subway and I fainted.

He tells me he'll send someone else in to talk to me, and leaves.

She's a young woman, pretty, maybe not more than twenty-five. "Do you remember what happened last night?" she asks.

"I was in the subway and I fainted," I say, no longer sure that it's the truth.

"Do you remember being in a fight?" she asks.

"No," I answer.

"Someone at the bar called 911 for you," she says. "You're a very lucky girl."

"I don't remember that," I say.

Her face is too familiar, and I remember where I know her from. She's one of them. They don't have a name. Just... them. Against us.

I jump her when she turns to leave. The adrenalin running in my system gives me the confidence to fight back when the doctor tries to restrain me. I thrash like a fish, trying to slip out of his grasp, and then he manages to get me on the floor, so I start biting at him when he reaches near my face -- oh God I don't want to die -- and then I realize it's not worth it anyway.

So I let the darkness in.


	4. Chapter 4

This time when I wake up I'm in a padded room -- I'm too tired to even be surprised. But I'm not restrained, and there's no medical equipment in here. And that _is_ a surprise.

Then there's a _voice_ inside my _head_, except this time it's unfamiliar, almost alien, and then I realize it's _me_. My voice, inside my own head for once.

Which begs the question of who's been in my head lately that hearing my own voice is a _change_.

Then there's another voice, but not from inside my head. From outside. I look to the glass window at the front of the room, and I can see two men, leaning on a desk. One of them speaks into a microphone.

"Nice to see you awake," he says.

"Nice to be awake," I snap.

"We've put you on some new medication," he says. "Hopefully you'll get used to it in a few days."

"My head feels like it's full of cotton."

He smiles. "A lot of our patients say that about the medication we've put you on. It'll pass in a little while."

"What's going on?" I demand. "Why am I here?"

"Shortly after you were admitted, one of our researchers recognized some of your symptoms and gave this fellow a call." He indicates the other man at the table -- tallish, blond, brown eyes. "He's globally known for his work with patients who have your disorder, and he absolutely _demanded_ to be allowed to work with you once he heard all the details."

"Why am I in a padded room?" I ask. I have so many other questions, but that one seems the most pertinent to me right now.

"I'll, uh, explain that," says the tall blond one, and the other man leaves, leaving me alone -- more or less -- with this guy.

He leans forward and speaks directly into the mike. His voice is confident, though he has a fairly strong Japanese accent.

"In my, uh, experiments with other patients, I found a, uh, 'safe distance' -- if you remain at that distance from other people, your treatment will go much easier."

"What's my treatment?" It almost sounds interesting. Almost.

"The medication you're on dampens the, uh, effects of your disorder to a manageable level; paired with physical distancing from distractions, it works to return you to a normal mental state."

"Who says I'm sick?" I growl, stalking over to the window. "I like myself fine the way I am."

He doesn't back off the way I would expect someone like him to. He stares at me; calm, nonconfrontational.

I slam my hands into the glass. "I'm not sick," I tell him. I pound the glass with my hand, and repeat, "I'm not sick. I'm _better_ than other humans, and everyone has so much _trouble_ accepting that. I don't get it," I hiss. "I just don't understand."

And then it's like the strength goes out of me -- it feels like the moment when the caffeine wears off, when you haven't really slept in days, when your body decides to rebel against your mind and send you softly spiraling far away -- and I fall to the floor.

The blond is staring at me all the while. As if he knows what's going on, inside my head.


	5. Chapter 6

I can't believe I'm losing my mind. I feel the same as always -- perfectly, perfectly rational. They tell me I see things that aren't really there, hear things that aren't there, and they tell me the medication will help me stay sane, collected, connected to what's real.

But my head feels like it's been stuffed full of cotton -- everything's dulled and sluggish.

They won't take me off the meds until I get better. They tell me that's why I'm here -- to get better.

Until then, I can't think straight. Everything's disconnected in my head -- fuzzy signals come through at best, and none of my old ideas make sense anymore. Nothing makes sense at all, in fact.

And it doesn't feel like anything. It feels like nothing at all.

* * *

Thanks to Mai and the anon in my English class for concrit, and carino for praise. Headful of cotton still stolen from "A Miracle of Science". _Echo Flux_ wobsite up and stumbling. Yay.


End file.
